Voter fraud: It's rampant!

The claim: 

President Trump has been conjuring the specter of voter fraud since the beginning of his presidency. Just three weeks after winning in 2016, he tweeted without evidence that he would have won the popular vote nationwide if the official count were to “deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” He went on to highlight three states he lost: “Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California.”

That was not a short-term fixation for the president. And now that the COVID-19 pandemic has convinced many states to conduct as much of the election as possible through the mail system, the president’s rhetoric on the subject has ramped up.

From May 2020: 

The facts:

As has been reported ad nauseum, voter fraud is exceedingly rare. After the 2016 election in California, the Secretary of State’s office opened up 89 investigations in election-related complaints. As CalMatters reported at the time:

“56 are allegations of double voting, 16 are allegations of fraudulent voter registration and 1 is an alleged case of fraudulent voting. The rest allege wrongdoing by candidates, petition circulators and others who work in the elections arena – not by voters themselves.”

As to the president’s other assertions:

  • Ballots will only be sent to active and registered voters in California this election — not to “anyone living in the state.”
  • It would be all but impossible to successfully forge a ballot, given that county registrars had unique identifiers for each ballot sent out and so know which ones will come back.
  • Professionals may indeed tell “people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote.” That’s also called “getting out the vote” and it’s perfectly legal.

Learn more about California’s (mostly) vote-by-mail election here.

© 2026 CalMatters

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